Inventing online games can be a depressing pastime

Creating imaginary worlds may sound like exciting work, but some video game developers have found it is putting their mental health at risk.

In July 2013, after toiling away in self-imposed isolation - 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for several months - Leigh Harris, 29, and brother Rohan, 31, founders of Flat Earth Games, finally finished TownCraft, a building and exploration game based in a mediaeval settlement. The game challenged players to ''turn a down-on-his-luck protagonist into the ruler of their own world''.

While the game's premise was innocent enough, it rubbed some players up the wrong way, and attracted cynical comments and criticism.

''When I'm putting creative work out there I'm quick to believe anything negative and gloss over anything positive, to the extent I will get incredibly anxious or stressed,'' says Leigh, who had to take medication to cope.

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It's a common theme among indie video game developers, even those who achieve unimaginable success.

Last month, Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen shut down his wildly popular Flappy Bird game to much social media hype. The game was widely praised for its graphics, sounds and the gameplay itself, but its extreme difficulty provoked a torrent of abuse and frustration on social media.

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The decision to shut down the game at the peak of its fame confounded many, as Nguyen was reportedly earning $50,000 a day from advertising generated by the 50 million people who had downloaded the app.

Nguyen originally sparred with naysayers, but eventually the success that escapes the majority of indie game developers became too much.

''I am sorry Flappy Bird users, 22 hours from now, I will take Flappy Bird down. I cannot take this any more,'' Nguyen tweeted on February 9. He later said it had ruined his simple life. ''I hate it,'' he admitted.

Jonathan Blow, who realised every game developer's dream of a seven-figure pay day in 2008 with his self-funded game Braid, said abuse was something developers had to learn to live with.

Despite the game's success, Blow observed that negative comments on forum posts and message boards accounted for between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of all feedback

It's extremely difficult not to be affected by such response, he said. ''It looks like you are being shit on by the audience you are working so hard to make nice things for.''

The experience undermined his desire to create something new, and caused him to suffer through a very negative year. He eventually got back to gaming and for the past five years has been developing a highly anticipated game called The Witness.

Flat Earth Games is also gearing up for another release, the launch of an iPhone version of TownCraft. This time Leigh Harris is more confident the ride will be smoother and he is taking the time to understand people's motivations for posting comments.

''The last time somebody posted something which was largely negative about the game was on Valentine's Day at about 7pm,'' he said. ''I just had to realise at 7pm on a Friday night on Valentine's Day, someone's having a bad day.''